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Winemaking: How To Make Wine Better

When I taste a finished wine, I am coming to terms with a number of important quality characteristics that inevitably lead me back to the wine’s elevage – its creation in the cellar. When I taste a young wine in the cellar, I am reading the wine’s health and potential – how it will taste the best many months or years in the future.

Off-the-clock, I enjoy certain winemaking styles and varieties more than others. But knowing and making wine are two entirely different things. The flashpoint of any decision in the cellar is not when a wine is treated or blended with another, but when the wine reaches the consumer.

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Every day – from the first buds of spring to the glass – a wine is moving, growing, changing. There are ways a winemaker can react to a grape and a wine, but the best winemakers guide a wine toward greatness.

Knowing the anatomy of the grape is important, as is understanding tannin, pectins, pH, temperature, oxygen, and sulfur management. But these should be background elements in the bigger picture.

Having many different options is the key. For example, if I were to purchase one ton of grapes, I might have 180 gallons of must after the grapes are processed. If I had two containers, I might consider putting one hundred gallons in each; using two different cultured yeasts for the ferment; three different storage containers for the ageing process – new and neutral oak, stainless steel.

During and after the fermentation process, frequent tasting of the containers would reveal subtle variations. Eventually, maybe one of the wines appears to have a lot of body, where another is lacking body.

If the two were blended together, you hypothesize, they might make a better wine. This is the basis for the elevation of your wine. A simple bench trial can be helpful in determining which direction to direct the wine.

Bench trials are small scale examples of a larger project. For instance, if you have 180 gallons split between three different 60-gallon barrels, you might try blending representative samples of each batch together. Subtle variations in the amount of one wine that is blended with another can often make a big difference. Ultimately, a better wine is the goal – a more structurally sound, balanced wine than the individual pieces.

The key, then, is to never treat the wine in a way that will scar it, or bring its quality down. Good cellar practices should be omni-present – frequent topping up of barrels, use of inert gas, temperature control, etc.

To that end, I repeat, it is best to have a lot of options, to make many different wines with the same juice, using as many natural and gentle techniques as possible. It is also important to understand the potential of the variety. Certain wines have an affinity toward oak, Cabernet Sauvignon for example. Others, such as Viognier, do not.

Knowing the difference between what you like and how you want your wine to taste are important parts of the puzzle here. Being able to read the wine is also important. Understanding what – if anything – the wine needs (air, water, acid, oak) can be determined during tastings of your young wine.

Tasting other producers’ wines of the variety that you are making should be done methodically. Knowing that you like something is not the same as knowing why you like it. Isolate the ones that taste the best and investigate the vinification techniques used to make the wine. Drafting that knowledge to the cellar can aid decisions which lend to a more complex final product.

Let’s say, after a few months of ‘study’ you ascertain that you want your wine to imitate Australian Chardonnay rather than Chardonnay from Burgundy. Using the Australian model, you might use stainless steel and/or toasted American oak to elevate the wine’s profile. If you would rather your Chardonnay taste like a wine from Burgundy, a program of barrel fermentation and lees stirring could be at the heart of the wine’s elevage.

If your intention is to create a product that is enjoyable in the short term, less elevage is needed. Less options need to be employed.

To make a wine that is continuously at the height of its potential, very special attention should be paid at every stage of grape-growing and winemaking. More options should be engaged.

To that end, a wine should always be vibrant and energized when it goes into the bottle. A healthy pH, and a fair amount of free sulfur dioxide can give the wine the legs it needs to outrun its own organic decomposition. But the architecture of the wine needs to be created long before the cork is injected into the bottle. Simply focusing on the pH and the sulfur level isn’t going to make a dynamite wine.

Wine made well can be complex and intricate, and something we all get very much ‘in the head’ about. But at the end of the day, wine is simply an alcoholic fruit drink, an enjoyable beverage – at least it should be.

The more attention you pay to the details of coaxing the best from your wine, the more your consumer will thank you by buying another bottle of your wine.

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Harvest is that magical time when the baton is handed from the grape grower to the winemaker. The crop has been carried from bud break through flowering, fruit set, veraison, and maturation. For the last stretch of this process, the winemaker should be in the vineyard frequently, in close contact with the grapes with which they will be making wine. Selecting the correct picking date can be the difference between making an incredible wine or merely an acceptable one.

Cabernet Sauvignon is undoubtedly one of the world’s most beloved red wines. As a single variety and in blends, Cabernet Sauvignon has gained fame in Bordeaux and California, and around the world. Wines made from Cabernet Sauvignon are often dark, aromatic, tannic, and they can typically age well. It’s for these and several other reasons that I include Cabernet Sauvignon in my own wine program.

It’s December. The cellar is quiet. The cacophony of harvest has faded. The wines have completed primary fermentation and are finishing in barrel. Now, we begin the slow journey through elevage – making decisions that will effect a wine’s arc of potability . It sounds like a heady task, but following a few very simple routines can result in a successful wine program.

Everyone’s seen the labeling on wine bottles: “Contains Sulfites.” There is no shortage of opinions as to whether sulfur should be used at all in the vineyard or the winery. Much like anything, with opinions comes confusion. As a wine-industry professional, I would like to dispel some of the myths. When it comes right down to it, there is always going to be some sulfur in wine. Sulfur is a natural byproduct of the fermentation process (yes, small amounts of sulfur can be found in bread too) and it is one of the most useful tools a winemaker has.